


See You When I Close My Eyes

by karaokeburial



Category: Assassin's Creed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 21:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karaokeburial/pseuds/karaokeburial
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clay never thought he went blind, and in a way he never really did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See You When I Close My Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I've been playing with the idea of Clay being blind during his time in Abstergo and using his eagle vision to see what was happening and I figured I should fic it, so here we go.
> 
> Clay's middle name being Mike is obviously fanon and is a nod to a friend on tumblr.

          When Clay was young, he’d seen stories on the Discovery Channel about people going blind, being born blind, coming back from blindness. This, of course, was interspersed with episodes about mummies, and sharks, and space. In terms of his interest level, space held so much more wonder and amazement than someone losing a sense.

           Growing up, he’d never thought about blindness. Clay’s senses were always there. They were concrete, a constant through all the changes that came with adolescence. They weren’t something that garnered attention. They were unwavering. They were all there, and he was gifted with one more.

          He’d first discovered it shortly after his seventh birthday, when he and one of his friends had gone to explore the broken down house on the edge of town.

 

    *******

          “C’mon Jack,” Clay squeaked, scrambling over the chest-height rock wall that surrounded the old Martin place.

          Jack clawed at the wall behind Clay, holding himself in place while Clay launched himself over the top. The thump on the other side signaled his bigger, crazier friend had hit the dirt without injury.

          “Hurry up!” He scrambled the rest of the way up and over, landing in the dirt beside Clay.

          They crawled through the two-foot hole in the wall at the back of the house, Clay first, Jack second. As they crawled, they listened for signs of the neighbors noticing them trespassing, even though the neighbors neither cared, nor could they see the house.

          It was pitch black inside and smelled like mold and rat piss, as most abandoned buildings do after more than a year in disrepair. Clay shuffled forward, trying to open his eyes wide enough that he could see.

          And then, he could. Not like he could with his eyes. Everything was still shadowy, but the outlines of things started to become clear if he looked at them for long enough. Out of the corner, he saw Jack. He was, much to Clay’s surprise, glowing blue.

          “Jack,” he whispered, his eyes still wide, “you’re - uh, you’re blue.” In the gloom, he could see the expression on Jack’s face change into one of confusion and disbelief.

          “Maybe you should wait outside,” Jack suggested. Clay shook his head and looked around again, vaguely seeing all the broken furniture and garbage littered around the back room of the house. At one time, it looked like it would have been a bedroom, maybe an office.

          “No,” he whispered, “I can see stuff. Like,” he paused and looked around again, his vision becoming clearer the longer he thought about it, “all the stuff in the room.”

 

*******

           Clay got into college, Clay did well. Clay went into space engineering. He had plans. Since he was five, he said he would be an astronaut, and now the dream was inching closer to reality.

          Clayton Michael Kaczmarek graduated college with a BS in Aerospace Engineering.

          “My son, the astronaut,” his mother had said at graduation, the proudest smile imaginable on her face as he walked to join them, graduation robe aflutter. “We’re so proud,” she said, nodding to Clay’s father. “So very proud, Clay.”  
    “Mike, mom,” he corrected gently, “it’s-it’s Mike. You know how I feel about the name Clay.”

          She tittered, shaking her head as she continued to smile at him. “I’ll humor you,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder, “Mike.” Clay had been her grandfather’s name, and her wonderful, smart son had reminded her of him on a daily basis. He’d come around to it eventually.

   

          Clay applied at NASA three months after graduation, and was rejected. He wasn’t physically fit, he was psychologically just a bit off, his family had a history of medical conditions, he hadn’t made the right impression. It didn’t matter the reason, or reasons, he didn’t have his dream job and the hope of ever having it was slipping away. Clay started to run, two miles in the morning, four in the evening. He swam laps at the local YMCA on the weekend, going for seven hours at a time.

          Clay changed his name to Mike, quickly. In interviews he was Mike Kaczmarek with a BS in Aerospace Engineering. He was Mike Kaczmarek without a job. He was Mike Kaczmarek, dipping into the remnants of his student loans to pay for his apartment. He was Mike Kaczmarek, and he was going to either die or move in with his parents.

 

          Mike sat in his apartment, shoveling two-dollar chow mein into his mouth as he read over another article about degradation of panels on the space shuttle. The Apollo moon landing had inspired his life, twenty years after it had happened. He’d seen video of it, and had known in that moment he wanted to be an astronaut. He wanted to stand on the moon, look at the Earth, and know that he was thousands of miles away from home.

          The draw of the moon was twofold for Mike. He’d be special, a success in the eyes of his family, and he’d be away from his father. He’d escape fixing roofs and listening to his father drunkenly slur his complaints about him, his mother, his home, his education, the women he dated, everything.

          His worst habit, according to his mother, was his sleep pattern. Awake all night, watching the moon pass, asleep from just after sunrise to just before sunset.

          “You’ll never get a girlfriend,” she’d chide when she’d see him on the weekends and in her voicemails she left every Tuesday morning. Every voicemail would end with, “And you’d get a job if you didn’t sleep all day.” Her disappointment cut him, dragging him down with every syllable.

   

          And then Mike Kaczmarek met Lucy Stillman. And he loved her.


End file.
